Swans at Work on New Album

Last year, scarily intense postpunk/industrial originators Swans reunited and released My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, a strong comeback album. And they're not stopping there. According to a press release, the band is currently at work on an as-yet-untitled follow-up album. They've just finished the first phase of recording in Berlin and will return to the recording process in Gardinier, New York in October, after their current tour. They plan to release the album early in 2012 on frontman Michael Gira'sYoung God Records.This album could turn out to be a massive undertaking. The band has been playing new material on the road lately, and some of the new songs are as long as 30 minutes. The band's live show currently runs about two and a half hours, and the album may be a comparable length. There's no tracklist yet, but the band has unveiled the names of some of the songs being recorded for the album: "A Piece of the Sky", "The Apostate", "Avatar", "Lunacy", "Mother of the World", "The Daughter Brings the Water", and "The Seer".

Meanwhile, Gira is currently putting together a Swans live album that will collect material from the band's recent shows. Some copies of this album may appear in stores, but Gira's mostly planning to release it in a limited handmade edition, with his own woodblock print and drawings, which will be exclusively available through the Young God website. The live album, which will be out in October, will be a benefit of sorts; sales will help pay for the new studio album's recording sessions.

The band will tour through Europe and North America in the months ahead; we've got their dates below, as well as a video of them playing "I Crawled" live in Ireland last year.